fiddle: toy: manipulate manually or in one's mind or imagination.
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I have just started reading
In the Country of Country: People and Places in American Music, a series of travelogues and biographies about the people and places that originate and sustain "authentic" country music
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I was also thinking of other venues, too: Our WEVL (a local listener-run radio station) offers quite a bit of programming that includes classic as well as contemporary (but not so commercially successful) country. And I assume there's a lot available (as your example attests) streamed on-line as well. (And I'd prolly listen to it save for my limping, decrepit dial-up with no speakers.)
I talked about this with my boss yesterday, too -- she's a big classic country fan; I mentioned that a lot of the stuff I really like is now being labeled "neo-traditional" and the term "country" has been largely hijacked by music that is decidedly not "country". She seemed happy to surrender the word ( ... )
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I don't think it's necessarily hard to find music that matters. (And that's a pretty wide term for me -- I like a balance of music that will simply shake my booty as well as shake my soul.) I think record companies and conglomerate radio giants, with manufacturing and pushing their idea of the handful of artists they think will generate money, have made it very easy for people to be lazy about it. You just have to look to the side and around that behemoth, and sometimes not very far, to find it. I'm thinking along the lines of some of my favorites that wouldn't necessarily fit Country, but would folksy integrity and the personal experience: Patty Griffin, Neko Case, Ani Difranco. None, I think, could be considered mainstream by the strictest definitions, they get next to nil "popular" radio play, but tons of people know who they are and all have huge followings. And they are extremely relevant, imo ( ... )
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Do you think songs do or can do that? And if so, is there a lot of that out there?
(I'm not saying my phrase "music that matters" has to be taken this way, but this is one of the primary ways I was thinking of it: music -- primarily songs -- that really match the lasting contributions of other works of art. And I should say that I'm not sure of my own answer to this yet! :).)
Hehe: There are more things I'd like to say to qualify this humdinger of a question, but I would rather hear what you have to say first! :)
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(The comment has been removed)
I want to ask you a couple curious questions, though:
Do you think that -- just as the musical genre has changed with time -- that also the market or industry that distributes it has also changed in ways that make a big difference. After some thought, I started thinking that surely the market that promoted and aired Hank Williams is different than the multi-media market that does the same for Kenny Chesney today. And if so, what difference does that market change have on the music and how it is received and enjoyed?
You also mention the necessity of a generational understanding of these kinds of cultural shifts. Would you say that music -- as a popular genre -- is usually about addressing a ( ... )
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What I'm saying is that, even now, both Austin City Limits and American Idol are about making money, but their very different methods and scales effect their performers, audiences, receptions, and genres immeasurably.
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